


Your Heart Will Write the Song

by CaptainLeBubbles



Category: Red vs. Blue
Genre: F/M, Pre-Relationship
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-06-27
Updated: 2015-06-27
Packaged: 2018-04-06 13:02:03
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,209
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4222674
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/CaptainLeBubbles/pseuds/CaptainLeBubbles
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>For the prompt: you're so attractive but every time you open your mouth i want to strangle you how did you end up in my bed exactly how many tequila shots did i have last night </p><p>Kimball wakes up in Doyle's bed. She is understandably confused.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Your Heart Will Write the Song

**Author's Note:**

> So, for those who don't have context for this: [here](http://piratewatchesrvb.tumblr.com/post/121622601259/what-the-fuck-did-i-say) is my facecanon for Doyle, and [here](http://piratewatchesrvb.tumblr.com/post/121221898774/doyle-has-his-hair-down-in-the-kimboyle-drawing) is my facecanon for him when he's not all nerded up. My first reaction when I drew that was "wow Doyle is weirdly pretty here" and then that turned into a discussion of Kimball finding out how pretty he is and being very very frustrated by it. Anyway, here you go. This was supposed to be a Kimboyle fic but they decided to make it ~~friendship~~ positive interaction instead.

*

There are two things that Vanessa Kimball knows to be absolute truths: 1, that Donald Doyle is the most annoying man she has ever met and that b, Donald Doyle is the most _attractive_ man she has ever met.

She blames her anger issues. Between his massive glasses, the nerdy slicked-back hair, and the perpetually nervous expression he normally wears, she'd have never seen just how damn attractive he actually was if she had a bit better control. But she'd wanted to yell at him so badly that she'd barged into his room early one morning instead of waiting for breakfast (Dr. Grey insisted that for team-building purposes they eat breakfast together; this was not a good way to start the day but at least they'd learned to wait until the food was gone to start arguing. She supposed that counted as a small victory and she'd learned to relish the small victories).

When she'd barged in, he had sat up and given her a grumpy, bleary expression.

“What do you want?” he'd said, voice stuttered by a yawn. She'd just stared, too stunned to actually speak.

Doyle was... _pretty_. With his hair down- without glasses to hide those eyes behind- with the nervous furrow of his brow gone- without everything that made him look like the sort of nerd she would have beat up on the playground a hundred lifetimes ago, before the war- he was actually attractive.

The realization had made her uncomfortable. She'd turned and fled without a word, leaving Doyle to flop back into his bed and, presumably, go back to sleep.

By the time she saw him again, he was back to his normal self, but it was too late. She couldn't get the image out of her mind.

*

That was almost six months ago, and she'd more-or-less let it go. She was careful to only ever see Doyle after he'd gotten ready for the day, so she could use a thousand images of him being a nerd to overwrite the one of him being hot. It was a lot easier, once the war was over and their primary wardrobe no longer consisted of face-hiding power armor. With his helmet on she didn't have a distraction of his actual face.

She doesn't think she can keep distracting herself anymore. Not now that she's woken up in his bed, with him snoring beside her. (He even looks pretty asleep. What is this witchcraft.)

She's trying to figure out, around the pounding in her head, exactly how this happened. She knows they were at a celebration last night- a year since the end of the war, a planet-wide celebration. After a day of memorials for those who had been lost, it had been a relief to go out to a party and watch fireworks and drink heavily, which now that she thinks of it may have been a terrible idea.

She remembers them arguing. That's not surprising, they spend a lot of time arguing. They've gotten better at keeping their arguments to themselves- it's important, they both know, to present a united front to their people- but she supposes with a few drinks in her, with the weight of her grief and her guilt, with tensions running high, it's not surprising that they would argue.

Kimball groans and clutches her head in both hands, wondering just how much she actually drank. She vaguely remembers- oh _no_.

She remembers at some point the conflicting images in her head had swum together and she'd told him to ' _stop being so pretty you jackass, it's annoying!_ '

She groans again, this time from embarrassment, and hears him stirring beside her. She suddenly feels angry- did he- did they- she snarls at him when he sits up and mumbles ' _good morning_ ' at her sleepily.

“Nice to see you too,” he says, yawning. “I have aspirin in the medicine cabinet. No doubt your head hurts, with how much alcohol you consumed last night, and no water to chase it.”

He sounds as irritated to have her in his bed as she is to find herself here. She glares.

“You jerk,” she mumbles, shifting enough to glare at him. “Did we do anything last night? Because if you took advantage of me-”

He looks perplexed, and then disgusted when he realizes what she's implying. His lip curls irritably in that way she's come to hate. “Miss _Kimball_ . What sort of man do you believe I am? I know we've had our differences but I would _hope_ that you've at least realized that I am a _gentleman_.”

She just sits glaring, shifting slightly to look pointedly at their current location. He sighs.

“You were behaving drunkenly last night. I felt it would be a poor showing for our people to see one of their leaders in such a state, so I brought you back here before you embarrassed yourself and, as your co-leader, me.”

“I do have my own suite, you know.”

“Mine is much closer, and I didn't feel right about leaving you alone. I gave you some pajamas, put you to bed on my couch, and went to bed myself. Sometime in the night you stumbled in my room and said you couldn't sleep alone, and asked if I would mind if you stayed with me. I agreed.” He huffs irritably. “Had I known it would mean waking to such accusations, I might have considered otherwise.”

There's a lie in his voice, and she wonders what it is he's not telling her. _Something_ , she knows.

He's telling the truth about them not having sex, though. She doesn't _feel_ like she had sex last night, and anyway, they're both fully clothed. (She's wearing a pair of lavender pajamas that are far too small to belong to him- they're almost to small to fit her. She wonders where they came from. The only one she can think of is Emily, but Emily is to tall for these, which ride up her calves uncomfortably.)

She slips out of the bed and stretches. “You said something about aspirin? And where are my clothes?”

“You changed in the bathroom. They're probably in there. I'll go fetch the aspirin for you.”

He shows her to the bathroom and leaves her there to change while he gets the aspirin for her; she sits on the edge of the toilet seat after stripping and just buries her head in her hands. She's trying to remember the night before, to figure out what it is that he's not telling her.

After several minutes without doing anything for the swimming images in her head, she finally sighs and finishes dressing. If she takes too long he'll probably get worried and come looking for her. (The thought is an odd one. She's never considered the idea of him actually worrying about her.)

He's in the little kitchenette making breakfast when she finally emerges, and there's a glass of water and a pair of aspirin sitting at one of the places on the counter. She climbs into the stool and downs both before pillowing her head in her arms to wait. He laughs softly, and she's annoyed by how nice his laugh is. He's still dressed down, too; it's too easy to remember how attractive he is and that's not helping her state of mind at all.

“It's not fair you're this attractive,” she says suddenly. At the stove, his back stiffens suddenly.

“So you've said,” he says. “I'm inclined to disagree with you on how attractive you think I am, but regardless, I don't understand why you would object. I have never objected to how beautiful you are, no matter how much you annoy me.”

The compliment, given so freely, catches her up short, and she scowls. He has yet to turn around. “It's just annoying.” She hesitates, and, “Felix was pretty.”

At the stove, Doyle sighs. There's a lot of solidarity in that sigh, a lot of understanding. “A pair of beautiful dark eyes and a honey-smooth voice. He got into your head and made you feel like if you just tried harder, if you just threw more soldiers at the problem, you could win, and bring about peace. The war would end and you would rise victorious over them all.”

Felix's eyes were a bright almost-golden shade of amber. “Locus?”

“I trusted him. I gave him power, I gave him pull. I believed that he would bring up my slack, that he would balance out my own weaknesses and so in my blindness I placed him at my right hand, above all others in my command. And he used that power to kill my people that much more quickly. And yours,” he adds. “And all of that was couched in a pair of beautiful eyes and a hypnotic voice.”

“It's hard to trust beauty these days.”

“And we have enough trouble trusting one another as it is.” He turns and sets a plate of pancakes in front of her. She pulls it to her eagerly- hangover or not, she's not going to turn up her nose at a stack of Doyle's pancakes. It's the only thing he can cook well but she could eat them her whole life if it was allowed.

“You missed your calling when you didn't become a pancake chef,” she says. This gets a laugh from him as he starts on his own breakfast and she has a startling realization that these early morning breakfasts together have stopped being tense a long time ago. She fumbles with the syrup for something to do, and notices him staring at her. “What?”

“I was trying to remember the last time we fought over breakfast.”

“I was just thinking the same thing. It's been awhile.”

“Emily will be pleased. She has always been eager for us to find some way to get along.”

“It's only a small victory.”

“I have learned to take heart in small victories, Miss Kimball.”

She's gotten used to it, over the past year, the way they have so many similarities. It still always surprises her, though, when he says something that she has thought as well. She takes another bite of her pancakes, then pushes them away and pillows her head again. She's hungry, and she knows she needs to eat something, but the room is starting to spin so it'll have to wait.

She groans. “I can't believe how much I drank.”

“Yesterday was difficult for both of us,” he says. “It's only to be understood.”

“You're not hungover.”

“I cope with my ghosts in other ways.”

The word ghosts trips something in her brain, and she sits up with a frown. “When I came into your room last night...”

“You told me your ghosts weren't letting you get to sleep.”

“Oh.” She feels embarrassed- she's a leader, she's not supposed to be driven by such weaknesses- but she and Doyle are supposed to be equals, so she supposes it's all right. She lays her head back down. “You hear them too,” she says softly. He hums an affirmative.

“Sleep is often a difficult mistress to tempt,” he admits. “Moreso when drunk. My ghosts like to remind me of my failures, Miss Kimball. I can only imagine yours sound very similar.”

“There's a lot of death I could have prevented. Every maneuver I led, even before I was leader. How could I have done it differently to minimize the loss of life? Would things have been different if I have?”

“Would they have blamed me, if they had time? Do their surviving loved ones blame me? Would I have done better to step down and let someone more qualified be in charge in my place?”

She looks up and their eyes meet. She gives him a small smile, and lays her head back down. “You know we fight so much that I forget that you went through the same things I did.”

“We don't fight as much as we used to.”

“We don't?”

“You haven't noticed?”

No, she hasn't, but now that he mentions it she gives it some thought and can see that he's right. She still wants to strangle him every time he opens his mouth but that feeling seems to be just a knee-jerk and more often a dull buzzing at the back of her thoughts while they wade through their communication issues. And despite all that, he's had her respect since she found out how much danger he put himself in at the temple so that he could spare everyone to help her and her people at Alpha. Since everything he did there.

He keeps the hilt of the key clipped to his side at all times. She used to think he did it for show, to remind everyone of the power only he held. Now she thinks maybe it's a reminder to himself.

“Maybe one day we'll actually be able to get along, then,” she says. “At the rate we're going, it'll only take about five years.”

“Five years from now, or five years from when we started?”

“When we started. Let's be optimistic.”

“It's a deal.”

When she looks up, he's smiling down at her. She smiles back, hesitantly, but stronger.

Maybe they'll manage all right after all.

**Author's Note:**

> But I mean they do eventually get together after this like that's a thing.


End file.
